Entertaining Hypocrites

Joe Orton was ruined and knew it, but he wasn’t a hypocrite. He was ruined by his culture. He was poor, ill-educated, raised in a family whose dominating personality was a tyrant. He was deprived of love and figures he could identify with. His society was to blame for his poverty. It was widespread when he was born on 1st January 1933. At the time, most wage-earners didn’t pay income tax. There was no health service, education was hit and miss. Deprivation was accepted by many of those in power as a fact of life. Orton was born into an exploitative, manipulative, abusive, hypocritical culture. He came to realize it and employed his genius in scathing mockery of the society which did him so much harm. Orton’s plays show what happens when people won’t face the truth about themselves. The carnage in Noel Road on 9th August 1967 might have been the final scene from one of his works. Orton had lived close to violence and abuse all his life. He knew a violent death was always possible.